Can You See Me?

What happens when the person you love most, best, falls prey to schizophrenia? Can You See Me? is the story of Doren and Sarah Solomon, a brother and sister so close they share a secret place, imaginary world, and private language during childhood. Told in the voices of Sarah and Doren, Can You See Me? is a powerful psychodrama, portraying schizophrenia from the inside-out. More

What happens when the person you love most, best, falls prey to schizophrenia? Can You See Me? is the story of Doren and Sarah Solomon, a brother and sister so close they share a secret place, imaginary world, and private language during childhood. While Sarah eventually grows up and relinquishes their private haven, for Doren, it becomes a way of life he never surrenders. Sarah struggles to help Doren, even to save him, without truly understanding the consequences. Told in the voices of Sarah and Doren, Can You See Me? is a powerful psychodrama portraying schizophrenia from the inside-out.

Ami Sands Brodoff is the author of the novel, The White Space Between, Winner of the Canadian Jewish Book Award for Fiction. The novel centres on a mother and daughter grappling with the impact of the Holocaust. She is also the author of Bloodknots, a volume of thematically linked stories about family: the threads that bind people together and the ones that unravel without warning. Bloodknots was a finalist for The Re-Lit Award. Her debut novel, Can You See Me? was nominated for The Pushcart Prize and is a recommended book of NAMI (The National Alliance for the Mentally Ill). Ami contributes frequent reviews to The Globe and Mail, Quill and Quire, The Montreal Review of Books and The Gazette. Essays and articles have appeared in Vogue, Self and Elle. Ami has been awarded fellowships at Yaddo, The Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, The Ragdale Foundation, Fundacion Valparaiso, The St. Cavalier Centre for Creativity in Valetta, Malta, among others. A native New Yorker, Ami now makes her home in Montreal. She is currently completing her fourth book, the novel Faraway Nearby.

Reviews

Heartfelt, ambitious; one family's way of coping with the trauma, shame and secrecy of mental illness. A genuinely moving novel.
-Publishers Weekly review, October 18, 1999

“This is a moving novel about the intertwined lives of a brilliant young man who succumbs in adolescence to the ravages of schizophrenia and his devoted but bewildered younger sister, who suffers along with him. It will be of interest to anyone who cares not merely about emotionally troubled individuals, but also about the others in their lives who are in their own way affected by the emotional problems that afflict them. The reader is led on a (moving and graphic) odyssey.”
-The Psychoanalytic Quarterly

“Author Ami Sands Brodoff, whose brother has struggled with schizophrenia, has written a novel looking at the disease from the inside out. Unique. Uplifting.”
-The Times

“Can You See Me? paints a gripping picture of schizophrenia’s toll on one individual and his family. The book gives, with fearsome clarity, a chilling insight into the minds of the rambling, wild-eyed people one sees on the city streets… the reader is virtually inside Doren’s mind as he wanders the New York landscape.”
-The Princeton Packet

And Other Authors and Experts

“In this spare, eloquent book, Ami Sands Brodoff unfolds a tender, richly drawn world inhabited by brother and sister-- orphans in a family of psychiatrists and neurologists—who test the limits of sanity. The novel touches deep chords. Brodoff’s writing is supple and fine, as she makes the imaginary worlds of Doren and Sarah as real as the real family that shapes them.”
-Jim Grimsley

“Riveting. Can You See Me? is a beautifully wrought and poweful novel. An unforgettable debut.”
–Jaime Manrique

“Ami Sands Brodoff has written a tender yet wrenching portrait of one family’s struggles to live with a brother’s schizophrenia, an illness that seizes its victims as teenagers and robs them and their family of the ordinary joys and sorrows of sanity. We are taken on a literal and emotional roller coaster ride as the family discovers that love may not be enough to conquer the emotional cancer of schizophrenia, yet it is all they can give.
-Philip S. Holzman, PhD, Esther and Sidney Rabb Professor of Psychology Emeritus at Harvard University
(reviewed the day of purchase)